A joint project of Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and Finnish journalists exposed several dozen Russian diplomats who were undercover spies.
The Finnish publication Yle writes about it.
Almost a third of the employees of Russian diplomatic missions perform intelligence tasks, journalists state.
Several dozen diplomatic representatives were employees of the Foreign Intelligence Service (FIS), the GRU, or the FSB, but worked as personnel of diplomatic missions. They were usually assigned to secondary positions, because key diplomats can rarely be undercover spies.
Yle journalists established the identities of three such Russians. Among them is an alleged FIS employee Dmitry Otorochkin, who first worked in the Russian embassy in Helsinki, and then moved to Copenhagen, from where he was expelled in the spring of 2022. In the VKontakte network, he had three pages with different names and places of residence, but with photos by which he could be easily recognized.
Two more are 60-year-old Vladimir Komarov, who also worked at the embassy in Helsinki, and 37-year-old Dmitry Dvinyaninov. Both were apparently employees of the GRU. They were sent in the spring of 2022.
One of the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Finnish special services intervened several times when such diplomats tried to establish contact with Russians in Finland for espionage purposes.
Swedish journalists tracked down 21 alleged spies in Sweden and at least thirteen who continued to work in Stockholm until last April.
Norwegian journalists reported that the identities of 38 Russian intelligence agents were identified as part of the investigation — all of them were connected to diplomatic missions in the countries of Northern Europe.
According to journalists, the Consul General of Russia in Barentsburg, Andrii Chemerilo, is most likely connected to the GRU, because he lived at an address known as the training center for GRU employees. Chemerilo himself denies connections with intelligence.
- On April 25, Sweden decided to expel five Russian diplomats. Two weeks ago, neighboring Norway announced the expulsion of Russian diplomats. 15 employees of the Russian Embassy in Oslo, who turned out to be intelligence officers, became persons non grata.